Minnesota has a unified effort comprised of state agencies including the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), Department of Public Safety (MnDPS), and other relevant stakeholder groups to reduce traffic deaths to zero (Towards Zero Deaths). Currently, MnDOT analyses performance in terms of outcome variables such as number of traffic fatalities as shown in Figure 1.1, along with subscribed goals. This project supplements this approach by providing a survey tool to measure the traffic-safety culture of Minnesota drivers that is presumed to underlie the behaviours that result in these crash fatalities. "Traffic-safety culture" has gained recent national attention as (1) a variable that may explain risky driver behaviour (e.g., Connor et al., 2007), (2) a factor supporting acceptance of existing traffic safety policy and programs (e.g., Rakauskas, Ward, & Gerberich, 2009), (3) a contextual variable to define high risk groups of drivers (e.g., Coogan, et al., 2010), and (3) a new paradigm to support a vision of zero traffic fatalities (e.g., Ward, Otto, & Linkenbach, 2014). Whereas the concept of "safety culture" has been studied extensively in organizational settings related to safety (Choudhry, Fang, Mohamed, 2007), its application to traffic safety in the general population has been more recent and limited (Girasek & Becher, 2009). Accordingly, there is still some ambiguity about an operational definition for traffic-safety culture. In this project, a survey tool was development to help Minnesota (i) assess traffic safety performance in terms of self-report risk taking and cultural perceptions of traffic safety, (ii) identify behavioural risk factors (high risk driver groups), (iii) describe possible psychosocial determinants of the identified risk behaviours, and (iv) guide the development of safety policy and programs. To achieve these benefits, it would be necessary to integrate the regular (annual) administration and analysis of this survey tool with the existing data collection efforts to characterize traffic safety performance in Minnesota. The goal of this study was to develop a survey methodology for Minnesota to measure state-level traffic-safety culture with three objectives: 1. Index traffic-safety culture as performance indicator. 2. Identify culture-based strategies to achieve safety targets. 3. Assess receptivity of social environment for planned strategies. This report includes four chapters: 1. The preceding introduction 2. An overview of the survey development process 3. The results of the survey using a variety of analytical techniques, 4. And conclusions and recommendations. The survey development process (2) includes the theoretical background of the approach used in developing the survey, the selection of the target behaviours, the survey instrument, the methodology used to collect samples, and steps taken to validate the responses. The information provided by this survey methodology was complex (3). A variety of analytical techniques were used including basic frequency analysis, classification and regression trees (to create predictive models of behaviours), comparing what people actually do with what they perceive most people do, and the development of a predictive “score” for traffic-safety culture. The final chapter provides conclusions and recommendations based on the results (4). The conclusions are based on the analyses, and the recommendations provide guidance for potential strategies to improve traffic safety and offer next steps. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting